


night on a bus (and by bus, skye means plane)

by pleadingforclarity



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Bus Kids - Freeform, Gen, SHIELD 616 | The Bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 19:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13347816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleadingforclarity/pseuds/pleadingforclarity
Summary: skye's first night on the Bus, which is interrupted (kinda) by two scientists she barely knows





	night on a bus (and by bus, skye means plane)

It was late. Skye knew she should be asleep, but closing her eyes and willing herself to drift off wasn’t making it any simpler.

Sure, she’d only been on a plane once before joining the team, so the whole I-can’t-sleep-because-of-the-ambient-noise-and-the-turbulence thing was justified. When she was seven years old, a family from northern California had requested her for a ‘sleepover’, to see if she was ‘compatible’ with their family. She remembered being squished between an overweight social worker and the tiny window, gazing out of it, imagining that she could fly away herself. Or fly to her new family, and show them she could fly, because maybe, _maybe_ , if she could, they would love her. 

Unfortunately, that visit lasted a little less than two weeks.

So any mentions of flying- be it by plane, bouncy house, or on the bow of a ship heading for an iceberg- made her uncomfortable. Brought those memories back. Made her remember her first rejection again.

She got over it fast, of course. A girl in her situation _had_ to, she learned. If she didn’t, she’d never get out of the system depressed. Or alive. Or even able to _love_ again. So she focused on other things: the computer, her hair, her name. It took her a while to land on a name she really liked. When she had been kicked out of that first house, she resolved to change it once for every new bed she slept in, as a sort of precaution. 

First they were silly, names one would expect a little girl to name herself. Flower names and animal names and names of the mermaids on a TV show. As she grew, she experimented- some masculine, some feminine, some in between. After all of that soul-searching, she realized that having a girly name suited her. She liked her hair long and curly at the ends and her lips painted pink and tall black boots and jean-jackets. She picked names like Julia and Shelby and Katie and Stephanie. She adopted this look to charm, and then to steal, or bet, or play a guy into giving her things. 

When that faze ended, and she realized that no man (or woman, for that matter) in computer science would take her seriously, she promised herself that her names would be different. Unique. She kept to her word by replacing or adding letters to popular names, or by just making them up. Kit. Paulie. Zahrah. 

Eighteen was freedom. She wasn’t a ward of the state any longer. She could be whoever she wanted, and no one would make fun of her for it. She went crazy and did some not-so-great things and lived in not-so-great housing all over the country. When she turned nineteen, her roommate overdosed, and she decided she’d had enough of it. She stole from the men at her part-time coding job, bought a used van with the money, and used internet cafes to find anyone that would give her food. 

She told people who asked that she called herself Skye because it sounded cool. And it did, of course, but what she didn’t say was that she'd named herself after the great abyss of blue because she wanted to reach it. She wanted to fly through that plane window from her childhood. She wanted to be everything she could be and nothing less. She wanted to have the rain _purify_ her, or some crap. She wanted to be free. 

And she worked hard. Hard enough to be noticed by SHIELD itself. By that time, the wounds had healed as well as they could without access to therapy or medication or anything like that. 

It was ironic, she thought. The whole flying thing. That first night on the Bus, rolled up in a ball on her bed, she noticed how her previous experience had distorted travel by air for her. 

The noise was the worst. She didn’t even know how to describe it- like an ever-constant fuzzy pulsing noise? Like the engine of her van at top speed, just less satisfying and more annoying? Like the sound of the ozone layer depleting? It was the air, circulating throughout the plane, that sucked too. So unbreathable, so dry. She could _feel_ her skin losing moisture. It was unbearable. 

She turned on her other side, clumped her pillow into a tighter ball, pressed it to her ears tightly, and shut her eyes. She’d tried wearing headphones and listening to loud, classical music- but it’d made her ears sore. The only other thing she could think of was the pillow-to-the-ear trick. Which really wasn’t a trick, since it didn’t work. 

Skye twisted to her back, staring up at the ceiling. She _had_ to sleep. How had she forced herself when she was little? She couldn’t remember anymore. Skye groaned and turned over again, pressing her face into the pillow and groaning. 

Right as she was getting comfortable, something cube-shaped and mildly heavy landed right on her lower back. 

“Ow!” Skye cried out, sitting up and immediately regretting how fast she had risen. She paused, waiting for the spots in her vision to clear, and then turned around to face her bed frame. The object, which she now assessed to be some sort of charger, had mystery landed from that area. 

When she did turn, she found a certain Leopold Fitz poking his head out from his side of the wall, staring at her, almost laughing. She frowned, staring at his smiling face, flabbergasted. 

“What are you _doing_?” she breathed, standing up on her bed. He shrugged. 

“And wha-” she bent down, grabbing the charger, shoving it in his face, “What is this?” 

He shrugged again. “I heard you rolling around. And groaning at one point, I think. I’m up too.” 

“How long-?” 

“Since May turned the lights out.” 

"It’s been hours!” 

“Yeah, Fitz,” another voice started, which made Skye jump out of her skin. She looked past Fitz’s head and saw Simmons peeking out from the next bunk over, staring at the two of them incredulously. “You both should be sleeping, you know. We’ll be in South America tomorrow.” 

“Simmons!” Skye whisper-yelled, waving her arms up and down. “What the _hell_? You're supposed to be sleeping!” 

“Don’t be stupid. You two aren’t the only ones who can’t seem to sleep on this plane. It’s the engines, they’re quite loud, I mean, not loud _enough_ to keep me awake, but that they annoy me, you know, and the _eeriness_ too, actually-“ 

“Yeah, and the bloody air conditioning as well,” Fitz added. 

“Ugh, that’s the worst bit, isn’t it? It’s _freezing_ in here!—” 

“No!” Skye shook her head, placing her hands on her temples. She leaned her head over the partition and cupped her hands around her mouth, whispering. “Simmons, you need to be quieter. May’s gonna kill us. Like, actually kill us. She's the Cat- the Ca-" 

"The Calvary," Simmons offered, resting her chin on the barrier. 

"Right. The Calvary. SHIELD lore, and all that." When it seemed as if her point wasn't getting across, Skye exhaled, shaking her head. "Both of you know what I mean! You're _not_ helping!" 

"Sorry." 

"Yeah, our bad." 

"Yeah! It _is_ your bad!" She paused, huffing out a breath and laughing incredulously, “I can’t believe this is even happening right now. I mean, _look_ at us!” 

She tried stifling a giggle as she noticed Fitzsimmons’s upper torsos in their pajamas. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but once she started, she couldn’t stop laughing. And then Fitz caught on, and finally, after some meager chiding, Simmons did too. 

They eventually were caught by Ward, not May, and it wasn’t pretty. But when Skye’s head hit her pillow again, she was too tired to resist sleep. She dreamt of laughter and flying and choking by asphyxiation, but Simmons woke her up before it got too scary. She resolved to tolerate the plane- she had other things to devote her time to. 

(and by things, she meant people.) 

**Author's Note:**

> i love the buskids so much and i hope you do too.  
> thank you so much for reading!!


End file.
